Wii Fit AUReview

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The best aerobic exercise since intercourse.

By Patrick Kolan

What do I mean when I say I'm unfit? I mean, if I have to choose between sprinting for the train and making it to work on time, or watching it depart and waiting an extra 15 minutes, I'll usually bite the bullet and stick with the latter. I'm a lazy man. In this way, I am actually the target market for Wii Fit – your average, white, suburbanite slob, as Leary once chimed. But I'm happy to make the change – and Nintendo wants me to, too. Wii Fit has been designed literally from the ground upwards to take the sweat, aggression and prohibitive time commitments out of staying fit, and it does it through fun, simple exercises and a very neat piece of technology.

The Wii Fit Board, packed in with your copy of the game, four height-raising legs and some copper-tops, is something pretty special. I'd even use the word innovative, given the device is mostly used with your feet and it is sensitive to pressure and position on the surface area of the board. The promise of innovative applications awaits, but in Wii Fit, the use is much more straightforward.

The platform, which has a nice, heavy and solid feel to it, synchs with the Wii in much the same way the Wii remotes do – hold down a tiny red button under the battery flap when prompted after the game boots up. You're greeted by a bouncing, cartoony Wii Fit Board character who leads you through a tutorial of sorts; your weight, height (in centimetres only) and your centre of gravity are all measured. The resulting data is collected and creates your Body Mass Index (BMI) – the fundamental ratio-figure that determines if you're under, over or right on the correct weight for your height. With your BMI in mind, the game figures out your optimal body weight and your Wii Fit Age (like your Brain Age), and then asks you to loosely commit to a healthy regimen over a period of between two weeks and many months.

Like Mario Kart Wii before it, Wii Fit introduces its own Wii Fit Channel to your dashboard, should you choose to install it. The channel simply allows you to check out your vital BMI stats and your charted progress without having to insert the disc. Neat-o.

All of this is linked to your Mii, and you can invite your friends and family to join in if you so choose. The game then tracks all of your exercise progress on a calendar that you stamp off each time you use the game (optimally, a daily exercise session). It's worth noting that the maximum weight the platform can support is 150kg. If you're any heavier, you're just going to have to go about losing weight the old-fashioned way: Jenny Craigs, gym mats or lipo.

Pretty clear-cut stuff; the platform is incredibly sensitive to pressure changes – in real terms, it senses reasonably light drags of your toes through to your full mass pressing downwards at multiple points on the surface. The more obvious applications include determining which leg you tend to favour and therefore the alignment of your hips, shoulders and spine, through to the shift of your balance forwards and backwards.

The modes available take full advantage of the board – and occasionally the exercises don't use it at all. The Yoga, Athletic and Muscular training modes are excellent all-round courses, led by your choice of a fit regionally non-specific man or woman, each with a mostly pleasant British accent. Using the Wii remote, you simply point to the exercise you want to do, and the game takes you through between one and two minutes of each exercise, with the option to repeat or quit at the end. You're tracked on your ability to remain balanced – which is tracked at all times during each routine inside a small box with a 'sweet-spot' area of good balance.

The exercises themselves are all true-to-life workouts – from basic breathing and stretching, through to more intensive tests of muscular endurance, posture and smooth control of your limbs. Being a fairly unfit guy with little general interest in yoga (except for ogling girls in spandex, maybe), I enlisted my girlfriend – a yoga enthusiast – to double-check the procedures and clarity of the instructions.

She was quite impressed by the care taken in explaining the movements of your body parts at all times in the lead up to the actual tracked exercise. As she pointed out, it's much easier to watch a slow-motion CG representation of the human form perform an action than to watch a figure at the front of a full yoga classroom who might not repeat the action for you or give you a chance to catch up.